With car sales in China up 33% recently (as I recollect having read),
we do have cause to be concerned, I think...
William Lynn (who drives a VW Golf with biodiesel; you save those
beached starfish flinging them back in the ocean one at a time...)

It's not BS, John. I distinctly remember this. I was in college at
the time, and an interdisciplinary class on the subject presented
prof after prof telling the horrors of global cooling. My brother in
law was working for the state in the geography department, and he
confirmed that global cooling was the verdict of the finest minds of
the day.

William, I like the starfish story. It's the only one I remember
from "Chicken Soup." But do you realize that more greenhouse gases
were released into the atmosphere by Mt. St. Helen in a week than
people have put there since the Industrial Revolution?

"But do you realize that more greenhouse gases were released into the
atmosphere by Mt. St. Helen in a week than people have put there since
the Industrial Revolution?" -- Kathleen

OH??

Volcanic eruptions can enhance global warming by adding CO2 to the
atmosphere. However, a far greater amount of CO2 is contributed to the
atmosphere by human activities each year than by volcanic eruptions.
Volcanoes contribute about 110 million tons/year, whereas other
sources contribute about 10 billion tons/year. The small amount of
global warming caused by eruption-generated greenhouse gases is offset
by the far greater amount of global cooling caused by
eruption-generated particles in the stratosphere (the haze effect).
Greenhouse warming of the earth has been particularly evident since
1980. Without the cooling influence of such eruptions as El Chichon
(1982) and Mt. Pinatubo (1991), described below, greenhouse warming
would have been more pronounced.http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/climate_effects.html

Kathleen, you are making an incorrect assumption in your criticism of
the global warming issue when you say we only have a few decades of
data. This is about weather, it is about climate, and we have data
going back hundreds of thousands of years about climate and
atmospheric makeup that illustrates clearly that what is happening
now, especially involving CO2, is unprecedented in scope and speed of
change. You need to look at this from a climatological standpoint,
not a meteorological one.

Fascinating. Watched the first segment and realized that it is the
finest movie making Exxon/Mobil can provide. This is the basic phony
science climate change debunker nonsense that misstates the global
warming argument in order to "prove" that what they misstate is not
true. Wow, they make up their own lies and then disprove them. This
actually opens up huge opportunities for scientific research.

Imagine being able to misstate Einstein's theory of relativity so
that one can make one's bones by "disproving" it.

Lol ... well, I apologize for the perceived attack on your religion.
Let me point out an error in one of your ealier posts, if you will.
CO2 is not abnormally high, but more than likely abnormally low. I
doubt you would get much of an argument from anyone, fundmentalist
christians excluded of course, that dinosaurs lived in an era both
warmer and higher in CO2 than the current. In fact, we're currently
in an Ice era, seen in earth having two polar caps in stead of the
usual one, and presumably we'll emerge once again to nicely higher
temperatures.- and higher CO2 levels.
Exxon/Mobil, Tom? What kind of argument is that?
"To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary
scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of
any doubts one might have." Now who would say a thing like that?
Suggestive of something a warmonger in Bush's circle might mumble
behind closed curtains, no?

Myopic in extremis, Tom!
I only noted that CO2 was "more than likely" abnormally low, because
science being what it is it's subject to revision. In fact, the
earth's atmosphere can be most accurately described as CO2 impoverished.
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-18/dioxide_files/image002.gif
Note that CO2 is once again at historic lows, and in particular note
the relationship between CO2 and average global termparatures. There
is no relationship whatsoever.
As for global termpartures - it would be a transgression of the
probabilistic law of regression to the mean if global termpartures
didn't revert to the mean adding ca 5% over the next 100 million years
or so. I have to point out that even if the rise were relatively
sudden it would "more than likely", lol, not give credence to the
religion of global warming.
And now you know what why I might call global warming a religion. It
is however worse than a religion, because the faithful in this case
have actual facts to contradict their faith. You now also know why I
posed this teaser::
"To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary
scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of
any doubts one might have."
Not a neo-commie warmonger, but an IPCCer. Shame on him, and shame on
the gullible and they are legion, as usual.

Without knowing if global warming is actually human-caused, if we do
nothing and it IS true, we are totally screwed.
If it isn't, what's the harm in stopping our dependence on foreign
oil, in effect giving our money to sheiks and despots instead of
developing our independence here? We have the technology.
To me, the thought that we could possibly be missing a chance to
preserve the world as we know it is worth the effort.
People who don't want to make the effort are going for the
comfortable and easy way, I think. They like the way they are living.
Why worry about 20, 30 years from now?
Well, the younger generation shouldn't forgive us for at least
giving it a shot.
My take on this dilemma...

I love nature and our environment and living in one of the most
heavily-industrialized places in the country (Northern Indiana), I
have deep feelings about it. A day at the Dunes National Lakeshore
restores me to sanity like nothing else. This does not mean I am
anxious to jump on every single tree-hugger's bandwagon.

I like for people to have jobs and feel they have the right to
protect their livelihood. Unlike some people, I believe that human
beings are more important than animals. Once I heard a schoolkid
respond to a Weekly Reader picture of a wolf dead at a farmer's hand
this way: "Somebody should have shot the farmer." It made me
cringe. Does something not seem to be, uh, disproportionate there?

Moreover, I'd like to see better science applied before some of the
more marginal new regulations are applied by government regulation.

That said, whoever has caused the trouble, it could be time to stop
arguing about that and work on our common goal - Keeping the planet
inhabitable for our grandchildren and their grandchildren.

I think maybe it's time we find a way to get politics out of the
discussion.

Here's an interesting article about reducing carbon emissions through
farming:
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/the-future-farms-that-may-solve-our-climate-woes/1252156.aspx
<<Tests show microbe-rich soils produced by the new methods can store
between five to 10 tonnes a hectare of carbon a year, compared with
less than 1.5 using traditional farming systems.
''We are talking about a quantum difference,'' Mr Wiley said.
Under the new system, currently being tested in WA and north-west NSW,
farmers increase soil carbon by planting sub-tropical grasses with
cereal crops or rows of the fodder shrub, tagasaste.>>

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/record-highs-beat-record-lows-united-states-2-to-1.php
Record Highs Beating Record Lows in US by 2-to-1, Redux by Matthew
McDermott, New York, NY on 01.13.10; Science & Technology (science)
[quote] Back in November scientists from the National Center for
Atmospheric Research and other equally prestigious organizations
informed us that since the 1980s record highs have been outpacing
record lows. And last year the ratio was more than 3:2--a normal ratio
over time is about 1:1. Well, since the recent snows across Europe and
cold snaps across much of the United States have brought the "it's
cold today so global warming must be a scam" crowd out in droves, I
thought (through Joe Romm's inspiration) that bringing back the
graphic above is appropriate.
...[/quote]

Chris, when you say that the dinosaurs lived in an era of musch higher
CO2, you are on one side understating it, and on another overlooking
the costs of higher CO2 in extremely low soil fertility.
During the period when the dinosaurs lived, there were no polar ice
caps at all. The climate in the polar regions was pleasantly cool,
whilst the arid zone covered latitudes from around 30&#730; to 55&#730;
from the equator, and the areas from the equator to 30&#730; north and
south were mainly seasonally dry tropical climates. There was less east-
west variation in climate than today.
The trouble was that the absence of ice caps led to dreadfully
impoverished soils of types extant only in the humid tropics,
Australia and Southern Africa today. The major agricultural soils of
Europe, Asia, and southern South America - chernozems, kastanozems and
brown soils - were utterly unknown. South African soil scientist
Michael Laker says (effectively) that the difference between Mesozoic
soils and present-day ones outside the tropics, Australia and Southern
Africa is probably understated by the paleopedological record, too,
because soils of Australia and Southern Africa are extremely
distinctive and difficult to classify effectively using
classifications developed for the very young soils of Eurasia, north
America, New Zealand and the Southern Cone.
For this reason, highly intelligent life forms like humans could not
develop in the Mesozoic environment. It is unlikely that civilisation
could survive forever in a much hotter climate than exists today.

The way rainfall has changed in Australia, especially Western
Australia, since 1967 (look at the decline at
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=139&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=009628
and the increase at
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=139&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=011003)
I have always been aware of the problems of climate change.
However, besides deliberately refusing to be taught to drive, I know
there is little I can do personally to deal with Australias utterly
appalling greenhouse gas emissions. What I can do, and try my best to
do given my problematic temper that is very prone to rant both in
speech and writing, is to try to convince people, especially people
abroad, that there are exceedingly sound reasons why Australias per
capita carbon emissions should not be the highest in the world, but
the lowest by a very, very large margin. I am well aware that present
cultural and political trends are likely to mean that Australia
retains environmentally-unfriendly technology even as countries in
Europe and Asia switch to carbon-neutral technology, and that because
of its peoples greater hospitality and generosity migrants and
workers will still prefer to go to Australia rather than a much more
sustainable country like Denmark or Sweden. My knowledge of how
ecologically absurd such a situation is makes me think a completely
new strategy has to be developed by countries whose people have
greater environmental awareness (actually reflecting far more
selfishness and less empathy) to really reduce emissions where
reductions are needed rather than where cultural and demographic costs
are very high.

It is: about forty percent higher than in the US. In reality,
Australias per capita carbon emissions should be, I have calculated,
about 1 to 4 percent those of Eurasia, the Americas and New Zealand.
The root of the trouble is that Australias surfeit of natural
resources leaves it politicians powerless and its well-financed and
ultra-comfortable suburban population totally passive. What is needed
- and has been proposed - is a total cap on income of mining companies
put totally to dismantling the car and coal industries of Australia
and replacing it with an absolutely first rate mass transit system to
cater for every single journey in Australia without a single molecule
of greenhouse gas emissions. This is something that should have been
achieved by 1990, but never will be as things stand unless Australia
is made into the kind of pariah state we associate with Cuba, Iran,
Libya or Sudan.